## Facts

- Irving C. and Jeanette Stevens bought two vacant oceanfront lots in Cannon Beach, Oregon in 1957.
- The parcels were zoned for residential or motel development, but portions lay within an “Active Dune and Beach Overlay Zone” tied to Oregon’s Statewide Planning Goal 18 (Beaches and Dunes), limiting development on areas subject to ocean undercutting or wave overtopping.
- In 1989, the Stevenses sought city and state permits to construct a seawall on the dry-sand portion of their property as part of planned motel/hotel development.
- The City of Cannon Beach and the Oregon Department of Parks and Recreation denied the permits based on Goal 18 and local ordinances.
- The Stevenses filed an inverse condemnation action alleging the permit denials and underlying regulations effected a taking without just compensation under Article I, section 18 of the Oregon Constitution and the Fifth Amendment (as applied through the Fourteenth Amendment).
- The trial court dismissed for failure to state a claim, reasoning that Oregon law already burdened the dry-sand area with public rights, so plaintiffs lacked the property interest allegedly taken; the Court of Appeals affirmed.

## Issues

1. Whether the owners held a compensable property interest in the dry-sand area sufficient to support takings claims based on denial of a seawall permit.
2. Whether Oregon’s doctrine recognizing customary public use of the dry-sand area constitutes a preexisting limit on title that defeats takings claims by negating the asserted right to exclude the public or erect interfering structures.
3. Whether the complaint stated either an as-applied or facial regulatory takings claim where the challenged ordinance and permit denial enforced those preexisting limits.

## Decision

- The Oregon Supreme Court affirmed dismissal for failure to state a claim.
- The court held that Oregon property law recognizes customary public rights to use the dry-sand area of the ocean shore, limiting private owners’ title.
- Because those customary public rights are a preexisting limit on the owners’ property interest, preventing a seawall that would interfere with public use did not take a compensable property right.
- Both the as-applied challenge (permit denial) and the facial challenge (the ordinance implementing Goal 18) failed for the same reason: plaintiffs did not identify a property interest that the government could “take” by enforcing those limits.

## Legal Principles

- A takings claim requires identification of a protected property interest; restrictions that enforce limitations already embedded in state property law do not take property.
- Under Oregon law, customary public use can define the scope of private beachfront title by limiting owners’ ability to exclude the public from the dry-sand area and to build structures that materially interfere with that use.
- A regulation may avoid compensation liability where it prevents uses that were never within the owner’s title because of preexisting principles of state property law; such limits defeat both facial and as-applied takings theories when the alleged right is absent.

## Conclusion

The Oregon Supreme Court held that enforcement of beach and dune restrictions, including denial of a seawall permit, did not effect a compensable taking because Oregon property law already limited private title in the dry-sand area by customary public rights of use.


Stevens v. City of Cannon Beach, 854 P.2d 449 (Or. 1993)